Favorite Free iPhone Apps  You can not really understand how fun an iPhone is until you own one.  iPhone is an amazing hand held fun machine beyond anything my imagination ever could have dreamed of.  When I got one initially, it just seemed like a cool, fun, hip thing to purchase (don’t call me a sheep).  Please understand, I am a cheap person and for my last couple of cell phone purchases, I just went with the phone that was covered by the contract.  Most people realize cheaping out is not always the best route.  I soon realized after my last phone purchase that a cell phone is now a very important day to day tool and not being able to say tell the time while you are on the phone is a serious con (discovered that weakness of my phone a week later after purchase - whoops).  The cell phone is now part of the new big three of Wallet, Keys and Cell, leave any of these at home and we feel lost and disoriented.

With a little simple math, I considered if I buy the $299 iPhone and hold it the term of the contract that is costing me $12.50 a month for a phone which will allow me to check e-mail and surf the web. So I made the leap.  So if you are lucky enough to either have the brains to have purchased an iPhone and you are not cheap.  Or you are cheap and you had my math epithany, I would like to share with you my Free Favorite iPhone Apps (in no particular order because I am too lazy to rank).  Please let me know if you have other great free apps to share with the universe!

SHAZAM - worthy of the super hero name.  I can not believe this app is free, it is a complete mind blower.  Just hold your iPhone next to the radio if you want to identify a song and Shazam will take in the sound and tell you the name and who it is from.  UNREAL

PANDORA Very cool app that lets you create a radio station based on your favorite musicians.  This is also available on the web, virtually commercial free radio.

THE WEATHER CHANNEL Great nuts and bolts weather program, much better than the default program I wish I could delete.

iTIP FREE Simple Tip Calculator, nice to have.

PUBLIC RADIO PLAYER Choose live streams from featured shows.  You can search by program name, state or local.  Very fun, watch out radios, the internet took down newspapers, next stop the radio as soon as internet tuners get into cars.  I predict MAJOR change to radio as we know it in cars by 2011.

GOOGLE MOBILE APP makes searching Google even easier

GOOGLE EARTH I am sure you get the picture, cool program.

URBAN SPOON find restaurants close to you based on location.  Restaurants are also sorted by neighborhood, type of food and price with user ratings.  Very sweet tool when traveling.

PLANETS 1.4 Unreal program, gives you hope in the positive uses of technology to enlighten.  Just check it out and give a collective WOW.

FAKE CONVERSATION FREE This app allows you to generate a fake phone call for fun or practical purposes.  Generates what looks like an incoming call then feeds you what to say to either look important, get out of a place you don’t want to be or have fun with friends.  PRICELESS

PDXBUS Lucky enough to live in Portland, Oregon?  This is a kick ass app if you are a transit rider.  Even if you are not, you never know when you might need to catch a bus, with this app you will have Tri-Met wired.

There you go, that is my list of my Favorite Iphone Apps and I am sticking to it.  Hopefully there are at least a few there you didn’t think of getting already.  If you are on the fence about getting an Iphone do it, yes the service is not as good as Verizon, but you shouldn’t be on the phone so much anyway.  Enjoy the momentary peace.